Category: News & Relevant Topics

Are you tired of hearing me say that I hate the modern practice of the death penalty because it’s now used to reap nothing than injustice, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to serve? Well, I’m not done. There’s just one more rant I want to post before I close this chapter for good.

“But it’s changing the Sharia law!”

I can’t tell you how much I hate hearing those words. People, the word Sharia does not mean penal code. Yes, aspects of justice and the penal code do fall in with the concept of Sharia but you cannot confound Islamic law, the moral code Muslims are called to live by, and the laws of your country enforced by the government. If you look at Wikipedia written in Simple English (apparently people are too stupid to understand regular English) you’ll see that “Sharia” isn’t a penal code set in stone. Very few aspects of it are set in stone in the Quran. I prefer to call the penal code part of it a principle of law instead since Islamic values such as equality and justice are set in stone, but social issues change from culture to culture, nation to nation, year to year and thinking that 7th century customs could solve modern issues is just insane. On the other hand, God’s timeless principles present throughout revelation can, but only if we can find a way to apply them properly under specific circumstances.

Let there be no question that Islam allows (that is allows, not mandates) the death penalty for certain crimes, it’s an ancient prescription that has been around since the beginning of time, but where people go wrong is that they justify its modern practice by saying “well, it’s in the books.” Yeah it’s in the books, just the Word of God is more than just ink on a page isn’t it? People also think that the justice system today is the same as it was in the 7th century but that could not be more erroneous. So what was the death penalty for back then exactly? Primarily a deterrent, and used really only as a last resort to keep the community safe and free from crime. Today the statistics prove that it’s not a deterrent (the exact opposite actually) and we have very safe and advanced, albeit far from perfect, criminal justice and rehabilitation programs. In a nutshell, the death penalty was prescribed to uphold justice, but in modern society it does nothing but reap injustice.

Take a look at the death penalty in Islam page on ProCon.org. I don’t believe that apostasy is punishable by death in Islam but that’s another story, but you’ll see that the death penalty was reserved for very serious offenses and not taken lightly at all. I must add that Sheikh Ahmad Ash-Sharabasi’s comments were laughable though. How is the modern death penalty self-defense? That’s completely beside the point. Sure, the ancient death penalty served to destroy the threat but do you think that the American terrorists in Supermax are still a threat? Self-defense isn’t even an issue. It’s misguided and erroneous. On the other hand, let’s take a look at what we do with the death penalty in modern society. Firstly, take what Rabia Terri Harris had to say:

An Islamic opposition to the death penalty must begin by acknowledging that the Qur’an may clearly be read as giving special exemption (from the general prohibition on killing) to the taking of a murderer’s life…

Those who favor the death penalty therefore cannot be considered as beyond the pale: we must accept the faithfulness and validity of their opinion…

[T]he responsibility of a Muslim is justice. Will the killing of a murderer produce justice…

[W]e can measure whether it does or not by examining the state of public trust. In the US, the following facts have been established…Nearly 90% of persons executed for murder were convicted of killing whites, although people of color make up over half of all homicide victims nationally…[and] 90% of the people US government prosecutors currently seek to execute are black or Latino…

There is no justice here. No needs are met, no fear is alleviated. This idea does not work. The hallmark of truth is that it works…

It is a far more serious error of Islamic ethics to demand a human death in circumstances when there are doubts about guilt or innocence, where the bereaved are not consulted about their wishes, and when the penalty is selectively applied based on the pernicious fantasy that some lives have more value than others.

Islamic law, and Islamic taqwa, demand that we dissent from such a travesty of justice.

Nobody’s telling you that the death penalty is not part of Islam, and nobody’s asking you to remove those verses from the book. What I am asking is that we stop allowing injustice in the name of “Sharia.” You run your mouth saying that Sharia upholds justice but congratulations, your beloved Sharia law has turned into an oxymoron because the exact opposite is all it’s accomplishing! Tariq Ramadan also echoes this sentiment:

[W]e launch today a call for an immediate international moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in all Muslim majority countries. Considering that the opinions of most scholars, regarding the comprehension of the texts and the application of hudud, are neither explicit nor unanimous (indeed there is not even a clear majority), and bearing in mind that political systems and the state of the majority Muslim societies do not guarantee a just and equal treatment of individuals before the law, it is our moral obligation and religious responsibility to demand for the immediate suspension of the application of the hudud which is inaccurately accepted as an application of ‘Islamic sharia’.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl also wrote that you’d basically have to be God himself to properly carry out a sentence of the death penalty. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan had this to say about the position of contemporary Judaism about capital punishment, which I believes echoes the sentiments of contemporary Islam in the face of the issues surrounding the modern death penalty:

In practice, however, these punishments were almost never invoked, and existed mainly as a deterrent and to indicate the seriousness of the sins for which they were prescribed. The rules of evidence and other safeguards that the Torah provides to protect the accused made it all but impossible to actually invoke these penalties… the system of judicial punishments could become brutal and barbaric unless administered in an atmosphere of the highest morality and piety. When these standards declined among the Jewish people, the Sanhedrin… voluntarily abolished this system of penalties.

We are closer to Andromeda than we are to a fair and equitable justice system. I don’t believe that reform will do it because peoples’ standards only keep declining, serving their own interests and disregarding the rest. How many times have I heard of dirty cops, corrupt law enforcement officials, cover ups, set ups, and downright gross injustice. So do we stop the oppressor from committing oppression? By removing the means of oppression, a.k.a. the death penalty.

When you sentence someone to life in prison it’s a very harsh sentence of reconciling with yourself looking at a concrete wall for every single day of your life but such a sentence can easily be overturned, after all the person is still alive and can still speak for themselves. On the other hand an execution is permanent and you can’t take it back. As I’ve written about in my previous published articles about this issue An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Part 1 of 2) and An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Part 2 of 2) among others, there is a scary amount of innocent people awaiting execution. And then we execute them in inhumane ways. Even if you wholeheartedly still believe in capital punishment after everything, you must also agree that there is no executing people in inhumane manners. That is not Islamic.

Is the modern practice of capital punishment faithful to the text? Not even close! Consider this next time you go on blabbing about that “it’s scripture” or that you care about human rights. The two must go together.

This is an old post from my LiveJournal account that I’ve recently cleaned up but didn’t want to completely get rid of everything and I’m glad that I’ve preserved my about half dozen entries or so because this is a very important one. Anti-Semitism (and racism and discrimination in general) is rampant and never seems to go away. Did you look at CNN or any other American news outlet recently? The entire country is going crazy. Up here in Canada it’s not nearly as bad, but we certainly aren’t free from the monster. In the near future I want to continue posting about this topic because I can’t just sit here and do nothing anymore, despite that I’ve never felt so powerless in my life before.

Date originally posted: June 14th 2017 (7:23 p.m.)

Mood: anxious

Not much to add today, just my roommates driving me crazy for the millionth time. The more this goes on the more I want to live alone. Of course many things need to happen in order for that to happen before I’m able to do that, but I might just get that process started. I think it would do me some good to get away from all of this. Of course there are many advantages to having a roommate or two, the biggest one being that things like rent are far less expensive. When they were all gone a few weeks ago I stayed home alone with my cat just watching TV and it got really lonely after the first week, but it was nice to just unwind after so much tension everywhere. I usually don’t go far or do much, but the two of them bring a lot of drama home and unfortunately I can’t exactly escape. We all share the same apartment.

Otherwise tomorrow it’s my birthday. At last! I was really getting hungry for my cake and other junk food today. I wasn’t sure I wanted one this year because my mind is elsewhere but I ended up deciding to invite some people over and just take the day to relax and regroup. I’m no fan of conventional birthday parties, I much prefer a relaxing day spent in good company and thinking about things than matter than going crazy. I might wanna go to the park and read the Quran or something, that is if the weather holds up for an outdoor adventure. I haven’t checked the weather forecast yet today but most of the time it’s not accurate in this region. Things change way too fast and the best way to determine the weather is to look outside the window.

I finally got back to going on WordPress and Tumblr regularly after not really being there for a while and only posting a few minor things. I changed most of my names (not username, just public name) on my social media to 42375 which is the number I picked for my tattoo, which was my grandpa’s service number during WWII. Honestly it makes me sad to see all the rampant anti-Semitism all over the place, from right here down the street to governments and institutions spreading it around across a good chunk of the Middle East. It’s truly unfortunate that many Muslims are systematically taught to hate Jews despite that the two communities have lived in peace for over a thousand years until just very recently the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Personally, I believe in a two-state solution. Each person and each nation has the right to be itself and to live in peace. Peace, isn’t that what we all want?

After all of these years there’s no way to have peace if you give the whole land to only one side. The other will rise up and cause another conflict because there has been way too much meddling from all sides including the outside for this to ever end peacefully because each person believes that the place is rightfully theirs (I won’t get into that right now) and unless there’s a compromise with each side getting something equal, tensions are only going to rise more and more. You cannot blame the entire Jewish population for what an oppressive regime is doing and you can’t blame the entire Muslim population for what a few radical Palestinians are doing either. Everything about this situation seems to have been tainted by everybody meddling in it without ever bringing about a resolution.

I hate it how Islam is often portrayed as being some anti-Semitic cult because of that ongoing conflict. We are supposed to maintain good relations with Jews (and all others for that matter), not hate them or want them gone from the face of the Earth. Plenty of Muslims perished during the Holocaust too, as well as Polish and Slavic people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, communists and endless others despite that the number of Jews was much greater than any of the other “unwanted minorities.” We also forget the stories of the Muslims who saved Jews during the Holocaust, the most famous stories being the ones of the Albanian Muslims. Muslim-majority Albania was the only European country that had more Jews after the war ended than before it started.

Have we forgotten about all the imams (not to mention countless other individual Muslims) who visited Auschwitz on more than one occasion? The photo below is from a trip in 2013 and there was another one in 2010. Undoubtedly in moments of anger we’ve all wanted to figuratively send someone to Auschwitz, but emotional reactions during a conflict are completely different than the horrors that actually happend there and all the other camps like it. If I can take any lesson from this it’s that we must stop making issues and conflicts all about ourselves and instead focus on humanity, because the world needs a whole lot more of that right now.

Muslim leaders from across the globe paid tribute Holocaust victims this week during a visit to Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp, where they prayed at the Wall of Death for those who were killed by genocide and suffered under violent anti-Semitism.

The imams, who hailed from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bosnia, Palestine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the United States, performed Islamic prayers while facing Mecca as part of a Holocaust awareness visit organized in part by the International Religious Freedom office of the U.S. State Department.

“What can you say? You’re speechless. What you have seen is beyond human imagination,” Imam Mohamed Magid, President of the U.S.-based Islamic Society of North America, told Agence France-Presse.

“Whether in Europe today or in the Muslim world, my call to humanity: End racism for God’s sake, end anti-Semitism for God’s sake, end Islamophobia for God’s sake, end sexism for God’s sake… Enough is enough,” said Magid, who leads the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Northern Virginia.

I’ve posted about forgiveness across different religions and traditions many times before but after seeing this story while researching the Holocaust for a book, I felt compelled to share it. The Scriptures have commanded us to forgive since the beginning of Judaism and science backs up the benefits of forgiveness on a person’s health and well being too. Now read this story for yourself and be inspired ❤

Yesterday I wrote a post about tattoos which links to another post about the same topic that I’d written previously but did not notice until now that one Tumblr link in it had become corrupt since I changed the name of the blog. I can imagine that this has happened in other sections of the website as well but right now I really don’t have the time to look through absolutely everything and update it all so I’m going to give you a quick and easy solution on how to make the content reappear.

The corrupt links that still wear the previous name of the blog show up as this:

What should be a Tumblr module that shows up is nothing more than a link to the error page now. The solution is simple: replace my old username with the new one, so where it says nomorehurtingpeoplepeace replace it instead with keepyourgoodheart which is my new username. Nothing else in the link changes, aside from the username everything else is still the same.

Try it for yourself right now! Click on the corrupt link above and replace the username. Previously you got this page, and with the new username in the link you’ll get this page. The module that vanished should actually look like this here on WordPress:

I suppose that eventually I’ll have to manually change these broken links but for the moment anybody reading my blog who comes across one should use this method to access the disappeared content, because it hasn’t really disappeared 🙂

You know you’re old school if you remember the glory days of LiveJournal back when it ruled the internet, yep that was before Facebook and Twitter and all the new ones that come out periodically these days. I remember that site from school almost a decade ago, it was the only one that wasn’t blocked back then. When Google+ really took off that wasn’t blocked either and we ended up all migrating there but I decided to go back to basics and I joined LiveJournal today.

Why do I need a second blog? After all, I have this one and I also have Tumblr for blogging, but I’m seeking a more diary-type platform for certain things. This here was originally started as a social issues blog but it has turned into a jumbled up mix of just about everything and I have no intentions of changing that whatsoever, but there’s some stuff I just want separate. It’s not private, it’s out there for the world to read, even for the Russian government to spy on, but I want that mundane and depressing stuff away from this here. This here is passionate and political Meela, my LiveJournal will be deep dark inner thoughts Meela.

Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world. ~Mikhail Bakunin

The two Meelas are perfectly complimentary, but I would feel more comfortable keeping them separate on the web. It’s more convenient and comfortable for me too. For now let’s see where it goes… I also need to get my ass to writing my About page for this blog… I’ve been on here almost a year now so I might as well get to it.

It was just a week ago that I saw this shocking and heartbreaking episode of the Dr. Phil show that I’ve been watching every day for several years now and honestly, I’m still not over it. I’ve never had a show stick with me like this before, but sadly the issue of human trafficking and prostitution is nothing new to me. I’ve seen many documentaries about it while studying social issues and one of my good friends is in a line of work that involves dealing with human trafficking victims and survivors.

What I find to be very sad is how these people (both men and women can become victims of this, however the majority are women) are looked down upon in society as being filthy rats with no value. We do not understand what road brought them to this point, maybe they were forced or maybe they had no choice if they wanted to survive. Even if they did it voluntarily for whichever reason in the beginning it often spirals out of control and they cannot break the cycle. That is why I was very touched by the important article that I’ve reposted below. Too many of us have forgotten this side of the story.

Personally I would be in favor of legalizing prostitution, not because I like that because believe me I don’t, but precisely to protect the most vulnerable and be able to safely and adequately reach them without getting them into some sort of legal trouble. The person buying the services should be the criminal in this case, not the other way around!

It’s also noteworthy to mention the Sunni tradition where God forgave a prostitute for being merciful to a thirsty dog. While other Muslim groups may not share this tradition, it’s not the first time that we hear of God forgiving a prostitute in the history of the Abrahamic faith. In both the Jewish and Christian Bible we hear the story of a prostitute named Rahab and you know what? She ended up doing good and God ended up forgiving her and accepting her. This is not to say that prostitution is okay or that God will just turn a blind eyes, but this does teach that sex workers are still beloved by God. God cares about them, and we should too!

I strongly encourage you to watch the Dr. Phil show that aired on March 21st, 2017 called Private Planes, Black-Tie Parties, Elite Sporting Events but this is just a very small piece of the story. This is an industry worth billions of dollars with an endless number of victims. I would also recommend watching a series called The Vanishing Women which also makes mention of the evil cycle of drugs, prostitution and helplessness. Kendall got to escape in one piece, but the women in The Vanishing Women did not. May God help the most vulnerable in our society and may we do our part to help them too.

Let’s get political again, sort of. It’s not new for the internet to be flooded with posts and articles comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler (and you can bet that even more will follow soon enough), all the way down to how the two of them saluted the cheering crowd as I’ve found below and just a quick Google search of Hitler salute will give you an equal amount of Trump pictures:

Anyway, in one article there was a mention of Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz. I found this interesting for several reasons; the first being that Trump’s highly controversial (and currently banned) executive order was passed on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th 2017), which also happens to be the day that Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. While I don’t believe that Trump is Hitler 2.0 his racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and nationalistic policies did send me on one epic rant about two weeks ago and hundreds of nasty Tweets.

I want to take a moment to comment on that since at one point I seemed to imply that Trump might as well create Auschwitz 2.0 if he can’t purge the unwanted immigrants from his country but I want to make it clear that I do not believe such a thing. There are mechanisms in place to prevent this type of genocide from happening in America no matter what the circumstances, but World War III could still start tomorrow! Such posts are also increasing in my news feed and while I do my best to believe that politicians aren’t stupid enough to repeat the disaster my grandparents survived, the cold hard truth is that even a small conflict can quickly get out of control and have large-scale catastrophic impacts. I sure hope that the world is overreacting on most issues, but I honestly do not know of a single person that doesn’t experience some degree of anxiety regarding these uncertain times.

I’ve calmed down considerably since my previous rant, but my opinion on the issue hasn’t changed. Not wanting immigrants is one thing, but getting rid of your green card holders (permanent residents) and separating families is taking it to a whole other level. The last I’ve heard though, the green card thing was dropped, but I don’t know about the rest. I’m just as confused as everybody else. As others have put it on social media, je suis sick of this shit.

So much for writing about what I originally came here to write… I don’t know where I’m going with this post anymore. I originally wanted to respond to a political rant I saw elsewhere on the internet that mentioned Rudolf Höss, which mentioned his repentance, but I’ve gone way off-topic. What I was getting at is that I was honestly surprised that he would actually ever have a shred of remorse considering the way he’s always been portrayed in films about Auschwitz. In another twist to this story though, I began a reading challenge with a group of friends and one of the topics is a book written by a criminal and my friend who organized the group recommended Death Dealer written by none other than Rudolf himself. He ends his autobiography with the following words:

May the public continue to see in me the bloodthirsty beast, the cruel sadist, the murderer of millions – for the majority of people would not be able to imagine the Commander of Auschwitz in any other way. The broad mass of people will never understand that he also had a heart, that he wasn’t evil.

Aside from being one of the most chilling books I’ve ever read, his autobiography frustrated me deeply exactly because of the way he ended it. He wrote just before that paragraph that he was shown kindness in prison and broke him, and that he chose to deliberately omit the sections of his book that would portray him having a heart. The reason that frustrated me is that now I’m extremely curious to know who “Rudolf with a heart” actually was but he deliberately took that part to his grave. I know that the world isn’t black and white, but Death Dealer left out the shades of grey in between. I would give the book 4 out of 5 stars and I recommend anyone reading this to read it too.

A Catholic priest named Manfred Deselaers also wrote a book based on Rudolf’s autobiography exploring the issue of evil from a theological point of view. Even as a Muslim, I found it very enlightening and well-written. Whether you are Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or something else, the concept of evil is something that touches all of us. That is also a book I would recommend. A third one that I’ve read (during my stint in the hospital I’ve had a lot of time to indulge in books) was Kolbe and the Kommandant written by Ladislaus Kluz in which Rudolf further elaborates on his repentance shortly before his execution:

My conscience is forcing me to make also the following assertion: In the isolation prison I have reached the bitter understanding of the terrible crimes I have committed against humanity. As a Kommandant of the extermination camp at Auschwitz, I have realized my part in the monstrous genocide plans of the Third Reich. By this means I caused humanity and mankind the greatest harm, and I brought unspeakable suffering particularly to the Polish nation. For my responsibility, I am now paying with my life. Oh, that God would forgive me my deeds! People of Poland, I beg you to forgive me! Just now in the Polish prisons have I recognized what humanity really is. In spite of everything that happened I have been treated humanely, which I had never expected, and this has made me feel deeply ashamed. Would to God…that the fact of disclosing and confirming those monstrous crimes against mankind and humanity may prevent for all future ages even the premises leading to such horrible events.

Naturally some people will never accept his plea for forgiveness, but I thought it was pretty powerful and even more so since I never would’ve expected something like that from someone like him. Honestly, it restores my faith in humanity in these tumultuous times to read something like that. If only we only opened our hearts more to the people that around us and their needs, and to focus more on being guided by warmth and by humanity, as Rudolf put it in his final letter to his eldest son. If the greatest mass murderer in history can come to understand this, why can’t we?

I will ask again, have we learned nothing from history? Why do our societies still thrive on hatred and bigotry? Why do we still elect officials that promote these ideologies? Many of my American friends tell me, “oh you’re Canadian you don’t understand American’s history,” and while that may be true to some degree, it doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t an American problem, it’s a humanity problem.

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My name is Jamila Mikhail (but you can call me Meela for short) and this blog is my outlet where I get to express myself and my thoughts about life and things that affect me, social and religious issues, stories and other writings, as well as whatever else passes through my head. I'm passionate about history, literature and television. My love for God and humanity motivates everything I do and I constantly love to learn more. I'm very open-minded and my hope is that this blog is a warm, positive and interesting space on the internet. You'll have to read through my endless writings and get to know me for yourself because I am an enigma even to myself.

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This blog only reflects the personal opinions of the author and is not formally affiliated with any other individual or organization of any kind. I am not a professional or a scholar of any kind and the ideas here are solely my own. At times I will link articles, webpages, books and more from external sources but that in no way means that I completely agree with or endorse all other material or viewpoints propagated by that individual or organization.